In our country, the United States of America, most senior citizens live alone and require constant monitoring of vital activities for timely detection of abnormalities in health thereby resulting in less expensive interventions. Patients, especially, elderly patients require constant monitoring to avoid falls, for example, from walking or standing, from standing on supports, falls from sleeping or lying in a bed, falls from sitting on a chair, falls due to obstacles, etc. These falls cause drastic change in vital activities, for example, heart rate pattern, respiration rate pattern, etc., which can be one of the reasons for injury related deaths in the elderly patients. Sometimes, falls are caused by fluctuations in the vital activities of the elderly patients. Immediate detection and alerting of care providers on change in the vital activities of the elderly patients using monitoring systems is required for reducing long-term treatment costs and eliminating chances of injury related deaths in the elderly patients. In some conventional monitoring systems, the elderly patient is required to push a panic alert button, if the elderly patient needs help or has fallen. An elderly patient with a severe fatality may not be able to press the panic alert button after a fall and hence cannot alert the care provider, for example, a medical professional, a medical assistant, an emergency responder, etc.
Conventional monitoring systems comprising, for example, accelerometers, posture sensors, global positioning system devices, mechanical and sound alarms, microphone, etc., are typically wrapped around a user's body and are required to be worn throughout the day and night. Some conventional monitoring systems use only accelerometers that limit monitoring to only movements of an infant, a toddler, a pet, or an elderly patient by attachment of the monitoring system to their clothing or between sheets, blankets, etc., of a crib or a bed. If a user chooses not to wear the monitoring system around the user's body at all times, and the user encounters a fall or any other incident when the monitoring system is not worn, the fall could lead to a severe injury or death. Moreover, the majority of the conventional wearable monitoring systems, hereafter, referred to as personal emergency response systems require a user to push a panic alert button, if the user needs help or has fallen. When the user pushes the panic alert button on a conventional personal emergency response system, the conventional personal emergency response system transmits a signal to a predetermined receiver over a network. The receiver then assists the user until, for example, a medical professional, a medical assistant, an emergency responder, etc., arrives at the user's location. Users who experience a severe fall may not be able to press the panic alert button after the fall and hence cannot alert a respondent. Furthermore, conventional personal emergency response systems do not detect falls in real time, or predict a risk of a fall. There is a need for a personal emergency response system that monitors, dynamically analyzes behavior of a user, and communicates the analyzed behavior of the user to a receiver, for example, an emergency responder.
Some conventional personal emergency response systems use wireless radio frequency (RF) communication to connect with local communication equipment, for example, a base station connected to a telephone line. A user in an emergency condition may communicate with a receiver, a remote operator for help via the base station over the telephone line. However, the user may fail to communicate with the receiver in case of disruption of the telephone line and the RF communication. Some conventional personal emergency response systems use either Bluetooth® of Bluetooth Sig, Inc., or Wi-Fi® of Wi-Fi Alliance Corporation to directly contact an electronic device of a medical professional, a guardian, an emergency responder, a medical assistant, etc. Other conventional personal emergency response systems use Bluetooth® to connect to an electronic device, for example, a mobile phone, a laptop, a tablet, a personal computer, that is in close proximity, for example, upto 10 meters of the personal emergency response system. The user of the personal emergency response system, via the Bluetooth® connection establishes communication with a medical professional, a guardian, an emergency responder, a medical assistant, etc. However, on failure of the Bluetooth connection or the Wi-Fi connection in the conventional personal emergency response system, the user is left handicapped from contacting a receiver. There is a need for a personal emergency response system that communicates with a receiver using one or more modes of communication despite disruption in anyone of the communication modes.
Consider an example of a non-emergency scenario where constant monitoring of vital activities of elderly patients using a personal emergency response system is being performed. The sensors in the personal emergency response system sense vital parameters related to the vital activities of the elderly patient and the personal emergency response system transmits the sensed vital parameters to store in external storage devices or buffers for determining patterns in the parameters before and after the elderly patient suffers a fall using, for example, a fall detection algorithm. However, the transmission of the sensed vital parameters to the external storage devices has to be initiated by the elderly patient who might be incapable of doing so manually, for example, by press of a button. Furthermore, a receiver with an external device would like to check on the well-being of the elderly patient as a part of the constant monitoring of the vital activities of the elderly patient. There is a need for an intelligent interactive personal emergency response system that handles numerous functions, for example, transmits the sensed vital parameters to external storage devices on interaction of a user, such as, the elderly patient with the personal emergency response system via a graphical user interface or a voice command and also allows two way communication between the receiver and the user.
There are dozens of monitoring and communication devices. But, as discussed, none disclose the unique features of the present invention. Hence, there is a long felt need for a method and a personal emergency response system that monitors, dynamically analyzes, and communicates behavior of a user with external devices in emergency conditions and non-emergency conditions. Moreover, there is a need for a method and a personal emergency response system that has redundant communication modes for communicating with the external devices. Furthermore, there is a need for a method and a personal emergency response system that supports two way interaction of the user with the external devices and interaction of the user with the personal emergency response system via different input means.